Perhaps it was always that way, or chalk it up to Radio and its relentless pursuit of audiences and advancing technology, but suddenly America became very curious. Curious as to how things were – how things worked – why were we in a Cold War – what was racism – who were your neighbors?
And whether or not Crime was something recently on the rise in 1949, or something that bore examining – the reasons as to why there was Crime and who were the people committing those crimes became the subject of much speculation. Some of it was attributed to the pressures of living in 1949 – some thought the 1949 “wave of crime” was something manufactured by some overzealous headline writers.
Many thought Criminals were born that way; something in their DNA brought out the worst side of a person, they couldn’t help it – although in 1949 DNA was a fuzzy concept; itself bearing scrutiny – people who committed crime all had this malady. Brain wiring askew.
Whether it was true or not became the subject of much discussion – and this episode of the CBS Radio series “You And . . .” examined those reasons and causes – and in this episode it appears Crime and its causes were purely scientific – forget social pressure – peer pressure or a pure and simple case of knuckleheadism, it was something whose roots could be pointed at and maybe eradicated by way of medicine. Since the War, medicine was making massive inroads into our society. It was getting rid of diseases – it was lessening the effects of those diseases – it was starting to look at the complex wiring of our brains and our emotions and those discoveries were opening whole new worlds.
So why not Crime? Wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple explanation to a problem which manifested itself in anti-social or criminal behavior? An explanation for which there would eventually be a simple answer; medicine.
To discuss this issue and the potential causes – here is an interview with Dr. Winfred Overholser president of the American Psychiatric Association, and for 25 years the superintendent of St. Elizabeths Hospital, a federal institution for the mentally ill in Washington, D.C. for the program “You And . . .” from CBS Radio on December 16, 1949.
